A looming dairy drought will stunt the world’s growth

IT IS every baby’s first food, and we cannot get enough of it.

The world produces close to a billion tonnes of milk each year – more than all the wheat or rice we grow. That lead is set to widen over the coming decade, with dairy consumption expected to grow faster than any other agricultural commodity. On a rapidly warming planet, this poses a host of problems.

Consider demand. There are more than half a billion people under the age of four in developing countries, and about a third of them suffer from stunting – short stature that is associated with health, educational and economic problems in later life. Most could benefit from the policy first proposed by Scottish nutritionist John Boyd Orr in the 1920s: provision of dairy products to give them a more nutritionally rich diet.